Yog Sothoth progress

I started to paint Yog with a plain pallet of green murky hues opposed to greyscale

I was having difficulty with light sourcing as i had no reference.
I asked a friend of mine who's artistically accurate to push me along the right lines with lighting and if im doing anything wrong.

Here i added an overlay of gradated black shadow to really bring out the depth of the peice, wanting to work that in some how, make it more dramatic with the shadows.

She came back with a  this image ((not this exact one as it was using green base tones and i saved over it without thinking when i was fiddling around with the colours)), reminding me about bounced light and other atmospheric light.
with her help i overlaid some dark shadows and changed the base colours from green to a fleshy tone which worked beautifully with the red bounced light and blue atmospheric as you can see now.

IM going to be using this as a base to work on,  refining the stomach to be more portcullis then boiler
that and adding in the gaseous boils, working off this other artists rendition of Yog Sothoth

for now he is unfinished and awaiting development

Yog Sothoth research

Yog-Sothoth

“I last Night strucke on ye Words that bringe up YOGGE-SOTHOTHE, and sawe for ye firste Time that fface spoke of by Ibn Schacabao in ye ———.” (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward)

“Rais’d Yog-Sothoth thrice and was ye nexte Day deliver’d.” (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward)

“He was soon disliked even more decidedly than his mother and grandsire, and all conjectures about him were spiced with references to the bygone magic of Old Whateley, and how the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of Yog-Sothoth in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him.” (“The Dunwich Horror”)

“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.” (“The Dunwich Horror”)

“Imagination called up the shocking form of fabulous Yog-Sothoth—only a congeries of iridescent globes, yet stupendous in its malign suggestiveness.” (“The Horror in the Museum”)

“It was an All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self—not merely a thing of one Space-Time continuum, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence’s whole unbounded sweep—the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which outreaches fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have whispered of as YOG-SOTHOTH, and which has been a deity under other names; that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable Sign...” (“Through the Gates of the Silver Key”)

http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/bestiary.aspx

Having such strong keywords like Gate, Key and Guardian. I had a definite image  wanted to portray with this Old God. Picking out other keywords from wiki's and this text i gathered up another of my keyword list:

YOG-SOTHOTH -

• gate
• bygone magic
• key
• guardian of the gate
• fabulous
• iridescent globes
• maglin
• suggestiveness
• space time
• all in one
• essence
• fancy
• mathmatical

Medieval gate guard? london tower? guard to the king.

My ideas were to have him in a medieval setting, its a good setting which a lot of people enjoy and can visually relate too easily. I began going through Google image search as I have done with my other researched images, looking at Beserker Knights, Gate Knights, Portcullis Gates, Yog Sothoth himself and an array of Fantasy Knights, creating my desired mood board:

With that set up i moved on to some concept sketches, as i didnt have a clear image in my head on how i wanted him to turn out

The thick central torso is what i was aiming for, along with chunky arms, and some sort of gate or shield present. I had the idea of two halves of a gate on each arm/fist, so when he threw his fists down in defence it made a fully functioning blockaid.

another idea was to have him holding a gate, or even better yet, becoming the gate.

I decided on the middle picture, with the small head and sloping shoulders, with comically tiny feet, as he wouldnt need them being a gate n all.

I wanted him to be a construct, a magic entity that looked like it was created.

half knight on one side, half fleshy gaseous bubbles on the other, as Yog is frequently mentioned to have a gaseous state, an iridescent globe like essence, which i wanted to include in his middle, the gate which would be hollow apart from glowing gassy orbs.

I also wanted to give him a war torn appearance, like he had bested thousands of champions and still standing.

Nyarlathotep research

Nyarlathotep

“And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of a nightmare.” (“Nyarlathotep”)

“What his fate would be, he did not know; but he felt that he was held for the coming of that frightful soul and messenger of infinity’s Other Gods, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.” (“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”)

“There was the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers—the ‘Black Man’ of the witch cult, and the ‘Nyarlathotep’ of the Necronomicon.” (“The Dreams in the Witch House”)

“There are references to a Haunter of the Dark awaked by gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron, and insane conjectures about the black gulfs from which it was called. The being is spoken of as holding all knowledge, and demanding monstrous sacrifices.” (“The Haunter of the Dark”)

from my research nyarlathotep was one of the mos intreseting old gods, with dozens of different identities and physical forms from these sources: wikipedia and yog-sothoth. a few include:

• Appears as a gelatinous mass extruding golden tentacles. 

• Appears as a hooved, hairless, man with pitch black skin and caucasian features. Appears to be an avatar of the popular depiction of Satan in Christianity. 

• Appears as a haughty Egyptian pharaoh wearing a brightly coloured robe. 

• Manifests as a twelve-foot-tall living skeleton with enormous claws and the head of a human embryo.

All if not most of these depictions include black skin, african features and egyptian culture with this old god, which gave me a good base to go on.

With this I put together a list of key words to use in making my image

NYARLATHOTEP -

• tall
• swarthy man
• egyptian pharaoh
• wanderer
• narrator
• magical instruments
• showman
• lecturer
• scientific
• joyous
• messenger
• Nikola Tesla? Pharaoh? gypsy traveller?

Another thing ive found is that he's the only Old God to not be caged away or locked in some sort of mortal object, he's free to roam the earth amongst humans, and thus depicted in various times.

I started to find images of modern egyptian fashion,  primarily silk suits and linen clothes